Fast & Furious 8 speeding through box office records

There was never much doubt that ‘Fast & Furious 8’ was going to go big – but it’s well on its way to being bigger than we might have expected.

Deadline report that the eighth instalment in the high-octane action series (released as ‘The Fate of the Furious’ in the US and some other territories) looks set to break two existing opening weekend records at the box office.

As of Friday, ‘Fast & Furious 8’ had hauled in an estimated $194.8 million (approx £155.57 million), and it is estimated that by the end of Sunday it will have made $430.4 million (£343.72m) internationally – i.e. every territory excluding the US – and an overall $534.2 million (£426.61m) worldwide, both of which will be new box office records.

At present, the highest US opening weekend international box office record is held by 2015’s ‘Jurassic World’ ($316.7m), whilst the global record is held by another 2015 blockbuster, ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ ($528.9m).

As is so often the case these days, the coveted Chinese box office has had a large role to play in ‘Fast 8’s staggering success, currently estimated to take $192 million by the end of the weekend, which will be a new record in China.

This opening should easily outstrip that of its predecessor ‘Fast & Furious 7,’ which made $250.5 million internationally and $397.7 million worldwide on its opening weekend in April 2015 – and given that film went on to make over $1.5 billion, this would certainly indicate that ‘Fast 8’ will wind up a hit of similar proportions.

It should also make ‘Fast 8’ automatically the fourth biggest box office hit of 2017 thus far, just behind ‘Kong: Skull Island’ ($538.3m) and ‘Logan’ ($597.9m). The biggest movie of the year thus far is ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ the only 2017 film to have broken the billion dollar mark up to this point – although it certainly looks likely that ‘Fast 8’ will catch up soon.